ESA's CryoSat team working on the Greenland ice sheet has been honoured with a visit from a Dutch delegation including HRH Prince of Orange. The visit is part of a tour to learn more about climate change in polar regions and consequences for the environment.

Discover ESA’s ice mission, track it in real time and obtain the latest measurements with the new CryoSat application. CryoSat is measuring the thickness of polar sea ice and monitoring changes in the ice sheets that blanket Greenland and Antarctica.

The CryoSat iPhone and iPad application – or CryoSatApp – is now available at Apple's App Store.

Starting today , CryoSat ocean measurements are being processed by CNES and distributed to the oceanography community. These products will be assimilated using models from the MyOcean project in near-real time to enhance sea surface products and to improve the quality of the model forecasts.

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During major crises such as the Deepwater Horizon and Fukushima disasters, MyOcean models exploited remote sensing data – in particular, altimetry data – to help monitor these crises.

Altimetry data is of highest importance to predict the evolution of local marine currents in near-real time.

Marking another remarkable collaborative effort, ESA and NASA met up over the Arctic Ocean this week to perform some carefully coordinated flights directly under CryoSat orbiting above. The data gathered help ensure the accuracy of ESA’s ice mission.

The aim of this large-scale campaign was to record sea-ice thickness and conditions of the ice exactly along the line traced by ESA’s CryoSat satellite orbiting high above. A range of sensors installed on the different aircraft was used to gather complementary information.

CryoSat was launched in 2010 to measure sea-ice thickness in the Arctic, but data from the Earth-observing satellite have also been exploited for other studies. High-resolution mapping of the topography of the ocean floor is now being added to the ice mission’s repertoire.

ESA’s ice mission is now giving scientists a closer look at oceans, coastal areas, inland water bodies and even land, reaching above and beyond its original objectives.

Launched in 2010, the polar-orbiting CryoSat was developed to measure the changes in the thickness of polar sea ice, the elevation of the ice sheets that blanket Greenland and Antarctica, and mountain glaciers.

The satellite’s radar altimeter not only detects tiny variations in the height of the ice, it also measures sea level and the sea ice’s height above water to derive sea-ice thickness with an unprecedented accuracy.

At a higher precision than previous altimeters, CryoSat’s measurements of sea level are improving the quality of the model forecasts. Small, local phenomena in the ocean surface like eddies can be detected and analysed.

2 July 2013ESA’s CryoSat satellite has found a vast crater in Antarctica’s icy surface. Scientists believe the crater was left behind when a lake lying under about 3 km of ice suddenly drained.

Far below the thick ice sheet that covers Antarctica, there are lakes of fresh water without a direct connection to the ocean. These lakes are of great interest to scientists who are trying to understand water transport and ice dynamics beneath the frozen Antarctic surface – but this information is not easy to obtain.

One method is to drill holes through kilometres of ice to the water – a difficult endeavour in the harsh conditions of the polar regions.

But instead of looking down towards the ice, a team of European scientists is looking to the sky to improve our understanding of subglacial water and its transport.

By combining new measurements acquired by CryoSat with older data from NASA’s ICESat satellite, the team has mapped the large crater left behind by a lake, and even determined the scale of the flood that formed it.

From 2007 to 2008, six cubic kilometres of water – about the same amount that is stored in Scotland’s Loch Ness – drained from the lake, making it the largest event of its kind ever recorded.

That amount of water equals a tenth of the melting that occurs beneath Antarctica each year.

Since the end of 2008, the lake appears to be refilling but six times slower than it drained. It could take decades to reform.

The study, published recently in Geophysical Research Letters, highlights CryoSat’s unique capacity to map changes in Antarctica’s subglacial lakes in 3D, and sheds new light on events at the base of the ice sheet.

CryoSat carries a radar altimeter that can ‘see’ through clouds and in the dark, providing continuous measurements over areas like Antarctica that are prone to bad weather and long periods of darkness.

The radar can measure both the area and depth of ice craters in high resolution, allowing scientists to calculate its volume accurately.

“Thanks to CryoSat, we can now see fine details that were not apparent in older satellite data records,” said Dr Malcolm McMillan from the UK’s University of Leeds and lead author of the study ‘Three-dimensional mapping by CryoSat-2 of subglacial lake volume changes’.

With every subglacial lake, there is hope of finding prehistoric marine life. The rapid draining and apparent refilling of this lake, however, suggests this was not the first time water has drained from the lake.

“It seems likely that the flood water – and any microbes or sediments it contained – has been flushed into the Southern Ocean, making it difficult to imagine that life in this particular lake has evolved in isolation,” said Prof. Andrew Shepherd, a co-author of the study.

About 400 lakes have been discovered at the base of the Antarctic ice sheet. When they drain, they disrupt subglacial habitats and can cause the ice above to slide more quickly into the sea.

The researchers discovered the Indian Ocean microplate, called Mammerickx Microplate and measuring roughly the size of West Virginia, using seafloor maps that combine data drawn from radar altimeters onboard the Jason-1 ocean surveying spacecraft launched in 2001 by NASA and the French space agency, CNES, and CryoSat-2, a European Space Agency environmental research satellite launched in 2010.

A novel way of using data from ESA’s CryoSat mission has revealed how meltwater from lakes beneath Thwaites Glacier drained into the Amundsen Sea – potentially the largest outflow from subglacial lakes ever reported in this region of West Antarctica.

Call for Media: Results from ESA's ice and magnetic field satellite missions

Scientists are convening in Banff, Canada, to discuss the latest results coming from the three-satellite Swarm mission on the magnetic field, as well as new information on changing ice masses from the CryoSat satellite.

Hosted by the Canadian Space Agency and the University of Calgary, the event also brings the heads of the two largest Earth observation programmes in the world - from ESA and NASA - to discuss future collaboration.

Launched in 2013, the trio of Swarm satellites are measuring and untangling the different magnetic fields that stem from Earth's core, mantle, crust, oceans, ionosphere and magnetosphere. Together, these signals form the magnetic field that protects us from cosmic radiation and charged particles that stream towards Earth in solar winds.

During the weeklong conference in Banff, scientists will present their latest findings derived from Swarm's measurements on the a newly-discovered difference in space weather between the north and south poles, as well as new information on the high-energy current systems that link the Sun to Earth.

The most detailed model to date of the magnetism of Earth's crust will also be presented.

Concurrently, a meeting dedicated to the latest information coming out of ESA's 'ice mission' CryoSat will take place. Since 2010, CryoSat has been measuring the thickness of polar sea ice and monitoring changes in the ice sheets that blanket Greenland and Antarctica.

Diminishing ice cover is frequently cited as an early casualty of global warming - with the opening of the Northwest Passage being one visible result. Since ice, in turn, plays an important role in regulating climate and sea level, the consequences of climate change are far reaching. It is therefore important to understand exactly how Earth's ice fields are responding to these changes - and by how much.

Scientists working with CryoSat data will reveal just how fast the ice sheets are melting, and how our changing climate affects Arctic sea-ice cover.

Media representatives are invited to the joint opening session for the '4th Swarm Science Meeting' and 'North-American CryoSat Science Meeting' 20 March at the Banff Park Lodge Conference Centre in Banff, Canada. The opening session will be followed by a press briefing and interview opportunities with world-leading scientists in these fields, as well as with the heads of ESA and NASA's Earth observation programmes.

The press event will be moderated by former Canadian astronaut Robert Thirsk, current Chancellor of the University of Calgary.

Media representatives unable to attend the event in Banff are invited to follow the opening session via live webstream. Press can then listen in on the press briefing via telephone, as well as ask questions and conduct brief interviews.

Programmes -Michael Freilich, Director of NASA's Earth Science Division -Professor Ed McCauley, Vice President of the University of Calgary

Followed by keynote address: -The Citizen Scientist - A New Era by Eric Franck Donovan- -Understanding polar regions with CryoSat by Andrew Shepherd -The International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics by Michael Sideris